


Home(less)

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarves In Exile, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 15:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16390388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: The Ered Luin can never be home. All Dwarves know why.





	Home(less)

**Author's Note:**

> Every once in a while I'm scrolling through Tumblr and I feel an irrational swell of anger when I encounter posts about how the dwarves ought to have just stayed put and let Smaug have their Mountain. Hence this.

Thorin never slept easy. None of them did. 

Men might, upon hearing the sad tale of the exile of the dwarrowkind of Erebor, tut their tongues and offer sympathetic expressions. _"Still,"_ they would reassure, in their ignorance, looking about them like startled sparrows at the peaks made a hazy azure in the early dawn light, _"Not bad diggings, is it? Out here."_

They didn't know. They couldn't understand. And so Thorin tried to keep a civil tongue in his mouth and a cool temper, like a halo round his head. He failed, more often than not, but he _tried._ Tried to remember his people's great blessing. And occasional curse. 

The stone of the Blue Mountains was stone and it was precious, but it was not _theirs_. When he lay down to sleep at night there was a part of him that was always on alert, always watching, always wary, uncomfortable in the knowledge that this was not _home_. The Mountains were beautiful. They provided shelter. But there was no Song. Merely an echo, a far-away whisper that called and called _Come back. Come back to me, my children. Come home._

He heard it. They all did. It went deeper than the mind, than flesh, than blood. They heard it in their innermost beings. It was always there, though there were times when it was drowned out, during raucous festivals, or the daily joys of labor, among the chatter of crowds and family. But when Thorin heard it loudest was when he lay down to sleep. And it would call and call, making him restless, drawing him to rise. Theirs were a people of war, but how could they not be, when they were accorded no peace?

Rise he did, went to the window and stared out into the blackness, out at the moon. The moon, the stars, they were wrong here, a world away from home. 

He wondered, sometimes, how it was for his nephews, the children of two worlds. Did they hear it? Would they know what it was if they did?

_Come home, come home, come home..._

And Thorin would splinter the wood at the window casements, grit his teeth and hiss back into the black, "I can't. I can't. Not yet."

Not now when the memory of recent bloodshed (and for _what?_ still soured so many hearts against them. How could he turn to his comrades, his kin, his brothers and plead with them to march across the plains and fields that had tasted the scattered ashes of their fathers and brothers, mothers, and sisters and return to the place of that first great tragedy?

The memory of dragonfire made him shudder, even now and in the quiet night another sound overtook the Mountain's call in his heart. Screams. Terror. Fright. Disbelief. For it could not be happening. Not to their _home._

The hooting of a night creature would bring him back. Remind him as the wind whipped icy through the cracks in the windows, of where he was. How far he was. And how much longer he had to journey.

He would get back into bed, eventually. After smoking a pipe, maybe, or pouring himself a drought of something strong. He'd sleep, eventually. Wake, eventually. To a sound that was less a noise than a feeling. To a whisper more like a heartbeat.

_Come home. Come home. Come home._


End file.
